Are there any performance benefits to fully formatting a hard drive (vs. a quick format)?
A full format does not just clean the partition table data, it also checks every sector on the disk surface for corrupted ones. This is primarily why it takes so much longer to perform then a quick format. A quick format just rewrites the partition tables.
From a performance standpoint, there is no difference. When the HDD writes a file to the disk, it just finds the next available "free sector", and overwrites whatever is there (regardless of whether or not it is a 0 or a 1). Think of it like this: a quick format just "deletes" all of the files, whereas a full format performs a sector check of the drive surface, and depending on the formatting utility, may fill the drive with zeroes (the default format utilities included with Windows do not zero-fill the drive. Most disk manufacturers provide diagnostic utilities which include the ability to do this.
If the drive is brand new, you should be fine with a quick format. If the drive has corrupted sectors (or even if you think that it does), it would be worth your time to do the full format. If you want to play it safe, ensure that you do at least one full format to the drive. That should reveal all bad sectors, and from then on, you can just do quick formats.
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I use Western Digital's Data Lifeguard tool to zero fill drives, it will do any brand. Once it is done the drive becomes "unitialized" in disk management, back to a factory state. This leads me to believe it writes to sectors a format does not.
I use this on drives that have problems installing an OS to when there was a previous installation, solves all kinds of weird problems.
Choice of format has no effect on performance of a drive
